On A Winter’s Day…

I repost this every few months or so. It was one of the first things I wrote in this blog:

A female friend of mine asked for my help in getting an abortion back in the 70’s. I forget how far along she was, but she was at least a few months along. It wasn’t my baby, so I didn’t care and said sure. She paid my gas and bought beer, and we went to the clinic and she asked me to come in with her. The staff assumed I was the father, so there was no problem with me going in.

They gloved me up and gave her a big old shot of Pitocin, and left me alone with her. Some time passed, and she began looking for all the world like she was having a baby. The nurse came in once and told me to encourage her to push, and went back out to help other girls kill their babies.

After one particularly huge pushing event, I heard a squishy, popping sound, and I looked under her drape and there was a puppy…no, wait, it was a little dark haired baby…for some reason I picked it up in my hands. It filled my cupped hands, its tennis ball sized head covered with dark brown hair, its little legs going back along my wrists. Through the gloves, I could feel it’s warmth…its heartbeat…it moved a little as it died, probably because no one came to clear its lungs.

The girl just stared up at the ceiling, breathing hard…tears running down her cheeks into her ears. Touched for some reason, I held it until the nurse came and took it from me and put it in a pan and took it away. She came back in a couple of minutes and helped me dress the girl. She looked at us with a strange light in her eyes and said “it was a girl”… I think she was upset.